What is clear in Washington is that US President Joe Biden ultimately failed to get his partner Benjamin Netanyahu to brake the military operation in the Gaza Strip, the increasing political and foreign costs of which began to confuse him and exacerbate his troubles and isolation in a decisive election year.

His calculations after he gave Israel absolute authorization to retaliate were that he could change course if a military solution was not possible after a limited period, but Netanyahu always had other calculations, which made him “the most difficult partner like no other,” as Democratic Senator Chris Coons, a very close friend of Biden, said. , which represents their state of Delaware. He knows Biden's "weakness" towards Israel, and therefore he will not use the stick of support and aid to force it to submit and reduce the temperature of the war on Gaza. He also realizes that the president has no intention of backing down from his opposition to a ceasefire, at least in the short term, and therefore persistence has occurred which embarrassed the White House and pushed it to return again to the hostage issue, perhaps ending in another truce open to extension, and the developments and breakthroughs it could lead to that could be developed toward some solution.

Reassigning CIA Director William Burns to take over the negotiations on this issue has increased expectations of reaching a new batch of prisoner exchanges, especially since Netanyahu needs a deal of this kind to relieve the pressures of the detainees’ families, which increased in intensity after the killing of three prisoners by Israeli forces’ bullets two days ago. 

In addition, there is a development in this direction that the United Nations may witness, today, Tuesday, after an expected change in the administration’s position on Netanyahu and his ignoring of the White House’s desire to stop the massacre, which began to show him as a contributing partner to it. The Security Council was scheduled to vote yesterday, Monday, on a draft Arab-Islamic ceasefire resolution, but the vote was postponed until today, after Washington apparently requested it. The information stated that this came in the wake of discussions and discrepancies within the administration, which most likely led to either a yes vote or an abstention from voting, and thus not using the “veto,” allowing the decision to be passed, provided that it comes in the form of “suspension” of the fighting, or perhaps “reducing its intensity” “And not stopping it, and thus the administration has begged the Security Council to “force” Israel to act according to it, but this output remains more symbolic than mandatory in the absence of its issuance under Chapter Seven of the United Nations Charter. However, its importance remains that it leads to the complete isolation of Israel.

But this possibility remains in the realm of possibility and not confirmation. In this context, it was reported that the US Ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, played an important role in this transformation, based on the background of the administration’s attempts that failed to move Israel from its position. It was reported that she was deliberately absent last week due to travel so as not to participate in the Security Council session in which Washington used its veto, which was delivered by Greenfield’s deputy, the diplomat Robert Wood. 

However, there were those who were quick to remind that the US President “does not favor entering into a direct confrontation with Prime Minister of Israel, but not necessarily. The administration of President Barack Obama, in its final days, voted in the Security Council against the legitimacy of Israeli settlements, and this may be repeated with the Biden administration, which Netanyahu ignored, after he received unconditional support from it, and employed it to fight the war of his political destiny by continuing to harvest civilians, starving Gazans, and working to displace them, in addition to threatening to expand the Gaza war.

In this scene, the Biden administration appears to be in a dilemma, as it does not want to back down from supporting the Gaza war, and at the same time it is unable to stand up to it, and thus it seems that it has ended up a victim of its ignorance that Israel does not listen to anyone in a war, because it does not feel safe in such a war. 

The situation even exists for the closest ally, and the Liberty ship incident in the 1967 war attests to this, as do Golda Meir’s quarrels with the administration during the disengagement negotiations in 1974.

Source: Alaraby Aljadeed